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The Cluetrain Manifesto — A Recommended Read for Digital Strategists!

Digital strategies are crucial tools for mapping a brand’s journey in the online world, answering fundamental questions about brand identity, visibility, authority, and content creation and management, among other aspects of maintaining a consistent online presence.

OVERVIEW

The book is an in-depth study and analysis of cluetrain.com, a website founded in 1999 and whose experiences have become a yardstick for assessing online strategies. The authors and contributors analyze various facets of Cluetrain’s decisions, business model, and business practices in the face of a new business reality — of maintaining their online presence.

Among the many insights they have shared throughout the book, I believe the following three remain important even today:

“Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships”

“We have some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some better service. Stuff we’d be willing to pay for. Got a minute?”

The Cluetrain Manifesto might be one of the best books written on the new reality in the digital age. The authors and contributors remind us that the purpose of business is to fulfill customer requirements and how important it is to leverage networks. It forces all digital strategists to ask themselves, “Do we really consider our customer requirements in our digital strategy?”

One opportunity highlighted is that leaders should lean more towards, and leverage, crowdsourcing to enhance the ability to innovate and to respond to customers’ requirements.

For further discussion of the topic, see my post on best practices for leveraging the crowd for idea creation, which offers insights for properly steering initiatives.

6 comments

As you read through this Manifesto, it’s very clear that the newer companies are more adept to adjusting their businesses to the digital age. The older companies have to make an effort to stay in touch with the modern day, or else they will be left behind. And I agree whole-heartedly….customers are the blood of any business. You MUST adjust to their pace, or be left behind.

This tips inspired me to make dicision in digital globalization. I am currently developing the strategy that will allow our clients to ensure that new applications will work effectively, globally. Thanks for sharing. 🙂

I’m going to listen to you and I will read Cluetrain Manifesto. Hope that will help me determine at least some parts of our company’s digital strategy. Wanted to add that you are creating a high quality content as well and I’m thankful about that.

Great tips and book! As we are in the process of getting as many useful info as possible for creating the best digital strategy for our business. Reading The Cluetrain Manifesto as we speak. Impressed.

And there I found the next book I will read: The Cluetrain Manifesto. Thanks for the resourceful article. The implementation of digital strategy is the next phase in our relatively new business and your blog has been useful so far. Brand visibility and authority are the things we need to accomplish and we will work very hard to achieve this.

I’ll be adding the Cluetrain Manifesto to my reading list. We’ve only just started our website, so creating a good digital strategy is definitely the next and vital step to our success. I’ve done a bit of researching, and there’s so much to learn, most of it I’ve never come across before. I’ve found your posts very helpful – thanks!